Torn

by T. N. King

  “Mason….” moaned, her hands pulling at his shoulders and her hips lifting against him as if she could fit him inside of herself from that alone. “Please…”

  She was so warm, her chest heaving from the restraint that he put upon her to hold her down in place, to keep her from actually successfully working her hips up into his and ruining his timing.

  “Please what Nicole?” He ground out, hips pressing just that much more forward, just that much more inside of her folds without actually entering her. “Tell me what you want,” he instructed, hand at her hip shifting to hold it more firmly down onto that mattress, his thumb extending to press against that bundle of nerves just above where he was positioned with his dick against her.

  “You, I want you,” she ground out herself, hip trying to lift up against his grip and her thighs widening even more under him. “Please Mason, I want you inside of me now,” she begged, words going straight to his dick and making him all the more impossibly harder, slipping just that much and feeling that heat encase the tip of him, groan out of his mouth and shaking intake of breath through hers. “Oh God, Mason please. Fuck me, please?” her words tripping over on another then, his hips following her direction and pushing the rest of the way into her until that little whimper moan could be heard over and above her shaking breathing, his torso angling down to better grip her little body beneath his.

  She had asked, and so prettily, that he couldn’t help but deliver, his hips pulling out and slamming back into her own, her whole body shuffling up that bed. “Don’t run away,” he instructed, body finding that pace that it craved so completely, her thighs lifting just enough to pull him in even further and he groaned. She was goddamn perfect, back arching like that and her moans coming more quickly and more loudly with each new thrust, her hips lifting to try and match his, rubbing herself against his thumb that he still had pressed into her clit.

  It had been too much all day, too much emotion and too much turmoil joined together like it had been, too many things the two of them had to face which culminated in the end of the day in his apartment, her in his bed. All of it too much with his muscles tightening and his breath leaving him in a loud grunt, body lowering even further to hers and his hand leaving her boob to instead grasp the sheet within his fingers by her head. Both of her hands moving to his back and pulling him even closer to her, internal muscles spasming about his dick until he lost control himself, falling down into her with ragged, uneven strokes as he came.

  His, “fuck,” breathed into the side of her hair, eyes closing and his breath evening out in what he had meant to be calming, and what instead turned into his falling asleep. Something they both desperately needed.

  It wasn’t until some indeterminate time later that he awoke, twisted in the sheets with her leg half-thrown over him and his heart racing, sheets sticking to his skin uncomfortably and that cold sweat had developed from whatever faceless, nameless thing that had been stalking him through his slumber. His breath was uneven, fingers twitching at his sides as he fought his way out of the twisted sheets, body moving as slowly and quietly as possible so as not to disturb the silent, still sleeping Nicole at his side. He couldn’t even focus on how delicate she looked in his much bigger bed, also twisted in the sheets and with her hair a mess of waves about her face and his pillow.

  He was struggling just to breathe, moving through the familiar layout of his apartment until he could work his way out onto his balcony, hands wrapping around the wrought iron and tensing, his torso leaning forward in an attempt to open his airway.

  “If it sours? What then? What if it doesn’t sour? I know you probably don’t care about the gossips in our town or what they’re going to have to say, but do you think Nicole will be okay with it? Do you think she’s going to survive the ridicule and scorn that’s thrown her way over what people are going to view as her sleeping with her brother? You don’t have to answer any of this now…. I just want to bring my concerns up to you, personally, and have you at least consider them, if only because I have asked you to.”

  He’d listened to her words, even if he hadn’t paid near as much attention as he was paying to them now, seeing Nicole again and again in his mind's eye. She had friends, she had people who considering her theirs in this town, she had a social circle she could fall back on with Aaron out of the picture… but could the same be said if it were known that the two of them were together? Could they even be together without it being a public thing? Especially with Aaron’s accusations going public as they now, no doubt, surely would…. Marie had made a good point, he didn’t exist inside of society the same way she and her daughter did, what wouldn’t affect him at all could very easily destroy her…

  Nicole liked people, she needed them, the interaction with the outside world that he found so primitive and useless… really did benefit her, and by denying her accessibility to it, he would only be damaging her even further than just their relationship would do. Maybe insisting that their minds wouldn’t be changed had been speaking too hastily, maybe allowing her to come to his apartment tonight had been the weak, selfish mistake made only because of his own physical desires and emotional wants.

  His mind was moving too fast, face rolling against the tops of his forearms from the way they were extended in front of him, tensing all the more at the opening of the door behind him and still attempting to slow his breath….

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  When Nicole woke up it was to Mason walking out of the room, her still dazed mind trying to make sense of why he would be leaving before the sun was even out in the sky in the windows beyond. It took her too long for her to put together everything that had happened the day before, and even just the fact that they were in Mason’s apartment and not her own, reality crashing upon her like a bad dream, her aching body slow in its attempt to remove itself from the twisted sheets about her. She knew they hadn’t been asleep long, if only because of how hard it was to keep her eyes open, even with the worry coursing through her like it was. She was worried. She felt like she stayed worried now, to stay worried no matter the situation or context, and only have any semblance of separation from that worry when Mason’s hands were on her body and pressing up deep within her.

  “Mason?” she tried to call after him, croaking out his name dumbly. Her throat was stripped though, from all the crying and sexual escapades in the last forty-eight hours, she didn’t even manage to make it loud enough that he would have been able to hear her across the room. So she stood, trying to shake out those knots that had formed so easily in her muscles in the short amount of time that they had been in his bed. He wasn’t easy to follow, the terrain of his unfamiliar apartment nearly tripping her more than just the one time, following that little sliver of light being let in from whatever room he’d retreated to, her arms hugging about her naked form. Then stepping out onto the balcony and pausing, overly aware of her lack of clothing and the chill of the night air.

  “Mason?” she tried again, arms tightening about her frame and following him the rest of the way out onto that ledge.

  His body, too, was naked- stress lines evident in the very way that he was hunched over his railing, face turning back to look at her with that same staid, blankness that only ever preceded him being negative in some aspect or another, her fingers indenting her flesh and her eyes rolling over his too tense form.

  “Mason, what’s wrong?” Panic built up in her chest, the thought that he could have received news so soon, this late, first and foremost on her mind. Maybe Jenson had found something that made their case harder, maybe a detective had uncovered evidence that worked against them… there were so many possibilities and her mind was all too ready to supply some that weren’t even plausible in the least, but fear worked against her psyche, ridiculous scenarios playing out behind her still tired eyes.

  “Maybe you should think about going back to your own apartment in the morning.”

  His voice was too serious, those words too even for her to do anythin
g but stare at him for a long moment, panic growing all the more with his addition. Go back? Why? Had he grown tired of her already? Was he reconsidering the benefits of having her here? Had he thought about what her parents had said and thought better of how soon they were moving things along? Did he want to better his case by not having her around or something? Had he changed his mind about the entire thing? Had it only been a physical pull that drew him to her in the first place? Just because he said I love you didn’t meant that it had to stick, she knew better than all of that, she knew just how well those words cemented anything… even Aaron had told her that he loved her.

  “Why?” Her voice was too small, the quavering note beneath it as embarrassing as it was unwanted. She didn’t want him to hear the desperation there, didn’t want him to see the tears that had already begun to build in the line of her eyes. She didn’t want to accept what he was saying, didn’t want to accept the possible reasons behind it. She wanted him to take it back, to apologize for suggesting anything even near that, but he was only stoically staring ahead, silent in the face of her question.

  She didn’t know if she was supposed to ask more questions or let it go, if he was purposefully ignoring her or if he was thinking about what it was she’d asked him, and she didn’t want to assume, but she couldn’t help but to do so when he was offering her nothing but silence at all.

  “You have friends,” his words were slow and careful, each one bitten off with careful deliberation. “You belong here… and by staying here and publically choosing me and this relationship in the manner it is that we suggested could cost you that.”

  His ‘and more’ hung off the end of his sentence unspoken, but she heard it regardless, that fine flashing through her head again and her steps even slower to him than his words to her had been, hand slowly wrapping around his arm and pulling him upright. Something he allowed her to do when he didn’t have to, standing there too straight for her to do anything but throw her arms around him. Her fingers interlocking behind him and her arms squeezing probably tighter than she should have been, especially given his lack of reaction at all to her doing so for a few minutes, arms slowly lifting to close back around her and his hands resting lightly against the small of her back. Like he would let go of her at a moment’s notice.

  “I only want to be with you,” the words were easy, falling from her lips and into the air around them with a sure certainty. She wasn’t’ having to force them, wasn’t having to fight them out of her throat. She had tied herself to this man, despite the social faux pas of doing so, despite all of the drama that came with it. She loved him, more than she had ever imagined herself capable of loving anyone, more than she had ever hoped to have found in another person. He was her rock, her person, he was the one that, even after so short a time, she couldn’t imagine not waking up next to. “I don’t want to be with anyone else.” She knew the words from how they had been forced out of her before, and she couldn’t help realizing how much easier they were to say here, how much more natural they were to say to Mason than they had ever been to say to Aaron. “I love you. So much.” The words hurt they were so honest, her arms squeezing him more tightly and that tremor in his almost undoing her.

  He wasn’t normal. He didn’t emote on the same level as most other people, he didn’t socialize well, he didn’t feel things like the majority of the human race did… but he was Mason, and she couldn’t imagine a world where he wasn’t, or one where she wasn’t in some way attached to him. Her body shifted, using all that was left of her strength to crawl up his stupid tall body, legs wrapping around his hips and ignoring entirely the fact that the both of them were as nude as the day they were born. “I’ll deal with whatever happens Mason.” Gladly. Any day of the week. “I love you. I can’t imagine life without you. I can’t imagine what’ll happen to me if Aaron wins and you end up in jail, I can’t.” She didn’t want to, those tears falling more freely the more that she spoke. “Tomorrow that could happen, tomorrow you could be arrested, or maybe next week- hell this could last month’s Mason. We could be in court for months and then they could take you away suddenly and leave me without you… I don’t want to waste that time. I don’t want to be in an apartment away from you when I could be living here with you, we might have to say goodbye later. Why do you want to rush it sooner?”

  The speed she was speaking at increased with each new sentence, her nerves and emotions getting the better of her and those arms, while holding her up, weren’t moving to do anything else. He was holding her, but that was all, only just not dropping her on her bare ass to leave the skin. She didn’t understand, he was the one who’d instigated all of it, the one who had pursued her when she intended to leave it be. He had claimed to love her, and she knew that it wasn’t always a promise of anything, but he wasn’t Aaron, and she knew that as surely as she knew her own name.

  “I’m not trying to rush it,” he said finally, arms tightening around her in a way that almost inspired her to start crying again, relief coursing through her in staggering amounts. “I just thought that you should be aware that you had an option,” he was speaking carefully, obviously leaving something out, but she didn’t care, frame sagging forward into his and her lips pressing awkwardly into the one corner of his. She had the option, she understood that, she’d had the option to walk away from him the whole time. It would’ve been socially right for her to have done so. It would have been easier on everyone else involved for her to have done just that- it was just that she herself wasn’t capable of making that decision, she didn’t want to make that decision.

  “I choose you,” she said again, reaffirming everything she’d just told him. She chose him now and she would choose him again, under any duress, with any extenuating circumstances… she would always choose him, his face turning into hers, mouth plying her own open and his tongue sweeping along her lower lip, forcing her jaw all the wider and allowing him access to her mouth. She did love him, and she knew he loved her, even if the words didn’t come as easily for him as they did her. His love for her was evident in the way he held her face while he kissed her, in the gentle press of his lips even as he guided her hips down into the erection she hadn’t noticed building below her ass, as he pushed himself so fully inside of her that she moaned—long and deep, her fingers indenting his skin as she tried to keep from sounding too wanton.

  She chose him, but he chose her too.

  Something made only more evident by the way his hands were lifting her hips, thumb brushing gently over the rounded skin there, at such odds with how hard he had begun to drive into her, her muscles already clamping around him despite how little had actually happened. She was going to come again and again, and she knew it, where he was probably only going to bust the once before they passed back out. She had enjoyed good sex with Aaron, excellent sex on occasion even, but none of it had ever approached the way Mason made her body sing. His lips finding the column of her throat and rumbling something into it that she couldn’t even hear. He wasn’t trying to rush it, he said, and he might have been referencing their impending separation, but he obviously had other intent for the words too, his hips slowing to a near stop just when she was on the precipice of spiraling beyond the point of return.

  “Mason…” she groaned his name, her fingers clawing at his shoulders, begging for some sort of release, and while his lips and hands kept moving, his hips had stilled, her body coming back down from that release that she had been chasing, exhaling heavily into the side of his face and her body tensing. She had just… “Oh!” She nearly squealed once his hips began moving once more, her body trying to chase that point when he’d stopped her from reaching only seconds before. “Mason…” again, her whole body lowering down into his, thighs tensing around his hips in an attempt to spur him further, his hand fitting between the two of their bodies. “Oh God,” she ground out, likewise grinding her hips down into where he had taken her clit between his thumb and forefinger, rubbing the skin between the points of his fingers mer
cilessly pinching until she felt like she was going to explode.

  She saw stars, and then colors that she didn’t even have the name for, whole body trying to work back against his and only managing the sloppiest, slowest circles, his hands hefting under her ass to carry her back inside, not trying to move at all inside of her despite the hardness she could still feel present there.

  “I’m not done with you yet,” he growled into her throat, shiver of anticipation working down from her spine at his words and her legs locking more firmly behind his back.

  They chose each other, again and again… they only needed to know how the other felt… and now that they had… there was no way she would live her life without him unless she was absolutely forced to. Nicole could wait, however long it took, she could wait for him before she would willingly give him up...

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  When Mason woke up again the next morning it was to find himself still fully seated inside of Nicole, her legs wrapped up around his hips as if she was trying to hold him there, refusing to allow him to back out of her, and there was no part of him annoyed to find it so. He didn’t remember when either of them had finally passed out, her body long past the point of shaking and twisting, having come at least four times the amount he had. He, himself, had only continued going until his body had fully given out, having spilled himself inside of her that last time and falling right there, still continuing to move his and her body, manipulate them so the concerns from earlier were unable to make their way into their consciousness, even subconsciously.

  The morning light filtered through the curtains he had up intermittently, bathing her golden skin in an even more golden light. The dusting of bruises along her torso colored differently enough to be passed over, even if his fingertips still ran over the shape of them slowly, cataloguing where he had colored her skin and where Aaron had forced injury into her. One was fond… where the other was not, even in the slightest. She was a mess of contradictions, more so than he’d even known previously. Strong and fragile. Smart and ditzy. Delicate and bold. His fingers grew softer, watching her facial features twitch, that awareness slowly flowing into her brain, and he felt all the more grateful that they’d fallen asleep in the position that they had, his dick half-hardening slowly inside of her.